The
NYTimes has an article about that wee hours amber alert I mentioned
yesterday, saying that I was not the only one awakened by this, explaining how
the system works, and discussing whether a late-night alert is really advisable
(thanks j.c.f.). It also tells us that the missing child that inspired the alert was
found, so there's good news there, and in fairness, the amber alert played a
part in this (albeit during the day when people were awake), so one can't
complain about the results. There's also a post about this on
Buzzfeed (thanks nin) including this explanation from the powers-that-be:
"It truly is a city that never sleeps. There are always tons of people on the
road. It makes perfect sense to send this out." So their actual intent wasn't to
wake up the millions of us who were asleep, it was for people to read on their
cell phones while driving that night. Okay, as long as they thought this all the
way through.

Does anyone else find it odd that the Amber Alert covered from the city to maybe 60 to 75 miles north, but they didn't even bother with the bordering counties in NJ? I get that the NYS Troopers are the ones who authorized it, so they can't do it in NYC, but this seems like a major hole in their alert system....the abductor just needs to choose the right bridge out of NYC.